Detectives investigating historic allegations of sexual assault against Russell Brand have asked prosecutors to consider bringing charges against the actor and comedian.

It follows a joint investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Sunday Times, published in September 2023, in which four women accused Brand of offences including rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse.

The allegations date back to between 2006 and 2013, when the 49-year-old was at the height of his fame.

He has denied any wrongdoing and insisted his sexual relationships have been “absolutely always consensual”.

Following the initial media reports, the Metropolitan police confirmed it had “received a number of allegations of sexual offences in London” and elsewhere in the country.

On Saturday it said “a man in his 40s had been interviewed by officers under caution on three separate occasions”.

“A file of evidence has now been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for their consideration,” it said.

At the time of the alleged offences, Brand was working as a presenter on BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and as an actor in Hollywood, appearing in films including Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

One woman told Dispatches that Brand entered a relationship with her when he was 31 and she was 16.

She alleged that the relationship, which lasted three months, was ­emotionally abusive and controlling and that Brand would refer to her as “the child”. Another woman alleged Brand raped her in 2012 in his Los Angeles home, adding that she received treatment at a rape crisis centre the same day, the Sunday Times reported.

The paper said she then messaged him to say she had been scared and felt taken advantage of, adding: “When a girl say[s] NO it means no.” Brand reportedly replied saying he was “very sorry”.

A third woman said Brand sexually assaulted her while she worked with him in Los Angeles and that he threatened to taken legal action against her if she told anyone, according to the paper.

A fourth woman said she had also been sexually assaulted by Brand and that he had been “physically and emotionally abusive” towards her, the Sunday Times said.

The paper said the women it had spoken to did not know each other and had mostly chosen to remain anonymous.

Following the allegations, the BBC and Channel 4 removed material featuring Brand from their websites, while YouTube stopped him making money from videos posted on his channel.

King Charles and Prince William’s property empires are taking millions of pounds from cash-strapped charities and public services including the NHS, state schools and prisons, according to a new investigation.

The reports claim the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which are exempt from business taxes and used to fund the royals’ lifestyles and philanthropic work, are set to make at least £50m from leasing land to public services. The two duchies hold a total of more than 5,400 leases.

One 15-year deal will see Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS hospital trust in London pay £11.4m to store its fleet of electric ambulances in a warehouse owned by the Duchy of Lancaster, the monarch’s 750-year-old estate.

The king will also make at least £28m from windfarms because the Duchy of Lancaster retains a feudal right to charge for cables crossing the foreshore, according to an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Sunday Times.

William’s Duchy of Cornwall, the hereditary estate of the heir to the throne, has signed a £37m deal to lease Dartmoor prison for 25 years to the Ministry of Justice, which is liable for all repairs despite paying £1.5m a head for a jail empty of prisoners because of high levels of radon gas.

His estate also owns Camelford House, a 1960s tower block on the banks of the Thames, which has brought in at least £22m since 2005 from rents paid by charities and other tenants. Two cancer charities, Marie Curie and Macmillan – of which the king is a longstanding patron – have both recently moved out to smaller premises.

The Duchy of Cornwall has charged the Royal Navy more than £1m to build and use jetties and moor warships. It also charges the army to train on Dartmoor but the Ministry of Defence refused a Freedom of Information Act request asking how much it costs. The duchy also made more than £600,000 from the construction of a fire station and stands to get nearly £600,000 from rental agreements with six state schools.

In spite of the king and Prince William’s speeches and interventions on environmental issues, many residential properties let out by the royal estates are in breach of basic government energy efficiency standards.

InvestigatorsThe investigation found 14% of homes leased by the Duchy of Cornwall and 13% by the Duchy of Lancaster have an energy performance rating of F or G. Since 2020, it has been against the law for landlords to rent out properties that are rated below an E under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards regulations.

The Duchy of Lancaster said: “Over 87% of all duchy-let properties are rated E or above. The remainder are either awaiting scheduled improvement works or are exempted under UK legislation.”

The royal estates also have deals with mining and quarrying companies.

The investigation has prompted calls for a parliamentary investigation and for the two empires to be folded into the crown estate, which sends its profits to the government. The king and Prince William pay income tax on profits from the estates after business expenses have been deducted, but both now refuse to say how much.

Critics say the estates, the income from which have been used by successive governments to keep the headline cost of the monarchy to the taxpayer down, enjoy a commercial advantage over rivals because they are exempt from corporation tax and capital gains tax.

Baroness Margaret Hodge, a former chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said the duchies should at least pay corporation tax. “This would be a brilliant time for the monarch to say, I’m going to be open, and I want to be treated as fairly as anybody,” she said.

Both duchies said they were commercial operations that complied with statutory requirements to disclose information. They also emphasised their efforts to become greener.

The Duchy of Lancaster said: “His majesty the king voluntarily pays tax on all income received from the duchy.”

In Spain, more than 200 people have been killed after the deadliest floods in the country’s modern history. Australia is heating faster than the global average, meaning more extreme heat events, longer fire seasons, increasingly intense heavy rain and sea level rise. And globally, this year is highly likely to be the hottest on record, beating the current title holder, 2023. For some, this escalating scientific evidence can be alarming. But the person in charge of Australia’s response to the climate crisis says that is not a word he would choose.

“If alarm implies concern, sure. But alarm implying surprise? No,” says Chris Bowen, the country’s climate change and energy minister.

“We’re living climate change. What we’re now trying to do is avoid the worst of it,” Bowen says.

“Report after report, temperature records tumbling, natural disasters increasingly unnatural – that’s why we keep going. That’s what drives me. It gets me out of bed every day. So perhaps alarmed is the wrong word. Disturbed, maybe. But, you know, not surprised.”

Bowen is speaking to Guardian Australia shortly before a US presidential election where polls indicate a 50-50 chance voters will elect a candidate who calls climate change a “hoax” and who would lead an administration intent on gutting clean energy and science programs and again pulling the US out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Six days after the US election, thousands of delegates from nearly 200 countries will land in the Russia-aligned petrostate of Azerbaijan for Cop29, an annual UN climate summit. Bowen will be at the centre of that meeting, having been invited to help lead negotiations on what is considered its most important work – setting a new finance goal to help the developing world.

The Australian government is also likely to learn if it will co-host the Cop31 summit with Pacific countries in 2026, an event that would bring tens of thousands of people to the country and increase scrutiny on its role as the world’s third biggest fossil fuel exporter.

But for now, all eyes are on the US.

What will a Trump win mean?

Speaking in his ministerial office in the Sydney CBD, Bowen acknowledges the election result will be seismic, and will shape the fortnight-long talks starting in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on 11 November.

Asked for his view on what a Donald Trump victory would mean, he is cautious but clear: the Albanese government and the Biden administration have been “closely aligned in policy and personal terms” and “obviously, having a United States administration with a very forward leaning climate policy is a good thing”.

He also gives three reasons why he believes a second Trump administration would be unlikely to live up to the former president’s anti-climate rhetoric on the climate crisis.

“Firstly, they are the United States. So the state functions are very important. And perhaps unlike 2016, where the result came as a surprise, if it is a Trump administration people are doing more preparation for it,” he says.

“Secondly, it’s hard to legislate in the United States, but it’s also hard to un-legislate. So the Inflation Reduction Act [which includes an extraordinary US$370bn in clean energy support] is the law of the land and will remain the law of the land unless it gets repealed, which will be very difficult to do. And thirdly, the private sector can help. In the United States, regardless of federal mandates, they know [climate action] is good business.

“Will the dynamics of Cop be different depending on who’s president? Of course they will. But does the rest of the world just walk away if the United States president is Donald Trump? No.”

Within climate activist circles, there is an expectation that if Kamala Harris wins, she may quickly set a 2035 emissions reduction target and other countries may follow. If Trump wins, many countries, including Australia, are likely to delay and recalibrate before setting their 2035 commitments, which are due next year.

Bowen says Labor will set a target based on “what we think we can achieve and what our contribution should be under the science” – and what others are doing. Initial advice from the Climate Change Authority found a target of up to a 75% cut below 2005 levels would be “ambitious, but could be achievable”.

According to a recent UN Environment Programme analysis, current national commitments would lead to only a 2.6% emissions reduction below 2019 levels by 2030. It is far short of what countries have agreed is necessary: a 43% reduction over that timeframe and a 60% cut by 2035.

Bowen says he understands “to a degree” why this big discrepancy makes people cynical, but argues the summits are important, not least because they send a signal to governments and investors marshalling trillions of dollars. He says there was genuine progress last year, including a non-binding agreement the world should transition away from fossil fuels and triple renewable energy by 2030.

“What’s the alternative? Not bother, not talk to other countries, not have targets?” he says. “Is it perfect? No, but it’s what we’ve got. I’d be surprised if people who are concerned about climate activism argue we should not be active participants in the global conversation.”

Bowen will arrive in Baku, an historic oil town on the shores of the Caspian Sea, wearing three hats. The most important role is co-charing with the Egyptian environment minister, Yasmine Fouad, negotiations to create a new finance goal – known in UN lingo as a “new collective quantified goal”, or NCQG – to help developing countries fight and limit climate catastrophe.

It is meant to replace a US$100bn a year goal that was set more than a decade ago and that it is agreed is woefully insufficient. Bowen says their ability to wrangle a consensus on the issue – covering how much is needed, who pays and what sort of public, private and multilateral bank finance should be counted – will largely determine if the summit is seen as a success or failure.

“I probably should manage expectations, but … this is the finance Cop,” Bowen says. “So getting an NCQG right is the key element.”

He is also chair of the negotiating bloc known as the umbrella group, which includes the US, UK, Canada and Japan, and will be representing Australia as it seeks to finalise whether it will host Cop31. Australia is favoured to win, but Turkey is also in the running and the decision-making process is opaque.

The bid has been mostly warmly received by clean energy and climate advocates and business groups, but some critics say Australia should not be rewarded with summit hosting rights while it is still allowing large new coal and gas developments.

This is the conflict in the Australian government’s climate position. At home, it has a program to underwrite enough renewable energy to generate 82% of the country’s electricity by 2030 and has legislated policies to drive a shift to cleaner cars and that promises to start to deal with pollution at large industrial sites. It is also attempting to argue against a Coalition nuclear energy proposal that many experts say would in reality boost fossil fuel power over the next two decades.

But it also has no plan to limit coal and gas developments for export. In September the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, approved the expansion of three thermal coalmines that could lead to more than 1.5bn tonnes of CO₂ being pumped into the atmosphere.

Asked if the government’s mixed messages – action at home, but unlimited shipments of fossil fuels to burn overseas – undermines its credibility and risks making people disengage on climate, Bowen responds that the Greens’ argument for no new coal and gas is a “neat, politically effective slogan”, but that “life is nowhere near that simple”.

“The idea that we can just say we’re going to stop approving new coal, which means we stop exporting coal in due course, that is not the way you get this job done,” he says. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s a drug dealer’s defence’. Well, ok … But the reality is that other countries will continue to export coal, and we need to think about our place in the world.

“I agree with this entirely: the biggest impact [on climate] we can have is on our exports. Hence, the need to become a renewable energy superpower.”

He points to an ambitious $30bn-plus SunCable plan to export solar energy from the Northern Territory to Singapore via subsea cable. Bowen was in the city state last month for the announcement the project had received conditional approval.

“You’ve got to look holistically,” he says. “Yes, our exports are important, but replacing our current fossil fuel exports with renewable exports is the key to it. Not just focusing on the negative – that we should be stopping fossil fuel exports.

“We should be replacing fossil exports with renewable energy. And that is a big task, which is going to take a little while.”

Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib declined to endorse Kamala Harris at a union rally in Detroit, where the war in Gaza is the top issue for the largest block of Arab American voters in the country.

Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, is the only one of the so-called leftist “Squad” that has not endorsed the Democrat candidate. The other three members – Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York – endorsed Harris in July.

“Don’t underestimate the power you all have,” Tlaib told a get-out-the-vote United Auto Workers rallygoers. “More than those ads, those lawn signs, those billboards, you all have more power to turn out people that understand we’ve got to fight back against corporate greed in our country.”

Tlaib’s non-endorsement of Harris comes as a voter survey published on Friday suggested that 43% of Muslim American voters support the Green party candidate, Jill Stein.

After Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in 2016, Democrats blamed Stein voters for the loss of Michigan and Wisconsin to the Republican candidate. Some Democrats fear that the same scenario could play out again next week.

Earlier this year, during the presidential primary campaigns, about 100,000 Michigan voters marked their ballots “uncommitted” as a mark of protest against the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s invasion of Gaza after the cross -border Hamas attack in October last year that killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages, mostly civilians.

Israel’s attack on Gaza has since killed more than 40,000 people, with many of them women and children. In Lebanon, where Israel has now invaded to fight with Iran-backed Hezbollah, more than 2,897 people have been killed and 13,150 wounded, the country’s health ministry reports. A quarter of those killed were women and children.

The US has been a staunch ally of Israel during the fighting, continuing to send arms to the country and limiting its public criticism of Israeli actions.

Tlaib has been critical of the Democratic party’s position on the growing and bloody conflict, saying it was “hard not to feel invisible” after the party did not include a Palestinian American speaker at its convention in Chicago in August.

In an interview with Zeteo, the news organization founded by former MSNBC host (and Guardian contributor) Mehdi Hasan, Tlaib said the omission “made it clear with their speakers that they value Israeli children more than Palestinian children”.

“Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties,” she added. “One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.”

Harris has faced continued protests on the trail, as demonstrators call for her to break with President Joe Biden and support an arms embargo on Israel. Harris has said Israel “has right to defend itself”, and that Palestinians need “dignity, security”.

Confronted by a protester in Wisconsin two weeks ago who accused the Jewish state of genocide, Harris said: “I know what you’re speaking of. I want a ceasefire. I want the hostage deal done. I want the war to end.”

At a rally in Dearborn earlier on Friday, Tlaib the criticized Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who has been endorsed by the Muslim mayors of Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck.

“Trump is a proud Islamophobe + serial liar who doesn’t stand for peace,” Tlaib posted on X. “The reality is that the Biden admin’s unconditional support for genocide is what got us here. This should be a wake-up call for those who continue to support genocide. This election didn’t have to be close.”

A piece of the radioactive fuel left from the meltdown of Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been retrieved from the site using a remote-controlled robot.

Investigators used the robot’s fishing-rod-like arm to clip and collect a tiny piece of radioactive material from one of the plant’s three damaged reactors – the first time such a feat has been achieved. Should it prove suitable for testing, scientists hope the sample will yield information that will help determine how to decommission the plant.

The plant’s manager, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco), has said the sample was collected from the surface of a mound of molten debris that sits at the bottom of the Unit 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel.

The “telesco” robot, with its frontal tongs still holding the sample, returned to its enclosed container for safe storage after workers in full hazmat gear pulled it out of the containment vessel on Saturday. But the mission is not over until it is certain the sample’s radioactivity is below a set standard and it is safely contained.

If the radioactivity exceeds the safety limit then the robot must return to find another piece, but Tepco officials have said they expect the sample will prove to be small enough.

The mission started in September and was supposed to last two weeks, but had to be suspended twice.

A procedural mistake held up work for nearly three weeks. Then the robot’s two cameras, designed to transmit views of the target areas for its operators in the remote control room, failed. That required the robot to be pulled out entirely for replacement before the mission resumed on Monday.

Fukushima Daiichi lost its cooling systems during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, causing meltdowns in three of its reactors. An estimated 880 tons of fuel remains in them, and Tepco has carried out several robotic operations.

Tepco said that on Wednesday the robot successfully clipped a piece estimated to weigh about 3 grams from the area underneath the Unit 2 reactor core, from which large amounts of melted fuel fell during the meltdown 13 years ago.

The plant’s chief, Akira Ono, said only the tiny sample can provide crucial data to help plan a decommissioning strategy, develop necessary technology and robots and retroactively establish exactly how the accident had developed.

The Japanese government and Tepco have set a target of between 30 and 40 years for the cleanup, which experts say is optimistic. No specific plan for the full removal of the fuel debris or its final disposal has been decided.

A high school in California has decided not to invest in coal, oil or gas, instead pledging to put money into clean energy. It’s the latest win in a new fossil fuel divestment campus campaign launched by high schoolers across 11 countries that is gaining support in the US.

The Nueva School, an elite private school outside San Francisco, pledged in spring 2024 to invest a portion of its $55m endowment in renewable power. The commitment followed months of pressure from students.

“If you’re choosing to put that money in the right projects, then you’re helping the world get where it needs to be,” said Ines Pajot, 18, a former student of the Nueva School who helped spearhead the campaign.

Unlike many other institutions that have faced divestment calls, the Nueva School had no direct investments in coal, oil or gas to pull. But it does have indirect investments, with less than 4% of its endowment in funds that are indirectly exposed to fossil fuels.

The students at the Nueva School say their win was made possible by engaging with the school’s board of trustees over the course of six years. By including a promise to place financial stakes in climate-friendly causes, they say the institution’s pledge goes a step further than traditional divestment commitments like those seen on many college campuses.

“The divestment movement looks different now than it did 15 years ago,” said Anjuli Mishra, 18, a Nueva student and coalition leader. “There are more opportunities to invest in clean energy, and it’s imperative for schools to align with this new investment landscape.”

Pajot said the students took a “collaborative” approach to their pressure campaign, choosing to work openly with the board and hear its concerns rather than simply making demands.

“We had a lot of conversation with the board and our knowledge very much evolved,” she said. The students started by calling for divestment, then became interested in a “divestment and reinvestment” framework. Eventually, they landed on a call for sustainable investment “because we realized that, to our core, we wanted to use money to facilitate the energy transition”, Pajot said.

The Nueva School organizers are part of the International High School Clean Energy Investment Coalition, which officially launched this fall after two years of informal organizing. The group of private high school students – hailing from about 50 schools, half of which are in the US and the rest of which span 10 other countries – are pushing their institutions to clean up their financial portfolios. Some of those schools have endowments of more than $1bn, rivaling those of some private universities, Pajot said.

In another recent win, the board of the prestigious Seattle Academy in Seattle, Washington, officially voted in favor of a divestment proposal this year and is determining next steps. And St Marks, a private boarding school in Southborough, Massachusetts, started to phase out its fossil fuel investments in 2022, while pledging not to directly invest in fossil fuels in the future. Today, less than 3% of the school’s endowment is tied to fossil fuels.

“The fact that the schools are making this decision shows that they’re taking climate change, in and of itself, seriously,” said Pajot.

Bill McKibben, the veteran environmental activist and author, praised the students’ efforts. “They understand the deep contradiction between educating people for the future and investing in ways that make sure that future won’t exist,” he wrote in an email. “Thank heaven they’re gently calling out that hypocrisy!”

High schools are a new arena for the fossil fuel divestment campus movement. Until now, activists have largely been focused on universities, where they have seen major wins.

More than 260 educational institutions worldwide have in recent years committed to halt investments in fossil fuel companies, according to data from Stand.earth and 350.org. Over the past four years, students at two dozen schools in the US have also filed legal complaints arguing that their institutions’ investments in planet-heating fossil fuels are illegal.

In 2015, a Pennsylvania high school made history when, under student pressure, it divested its $150m endowment from all holdings in coalmining companies. At that time, at least five other east coast high schools had launched fossil fuel divestment campaigns; an initiative at St Paul’s School in New Hampshire resulted in a decision not to divest.

Some educators are bringing the divestment movement beyond individual private institutions. In 2022, the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the nation, overwhelmingly supported a resolution calling on pension trustees to pull members’ retirement funds from fossil fuels and reinvest in “projects that benefit displaced workers and frontline communities”.

“As a lifelong educator, I’ve learned that climate change is probably the No 1 concern on their list that is keeping them up at night,” said Lee Fertig, head of the Nueva School. “They’re looking at this as an educational endeavor and not just a financial endeavor – what they can do, as young people dealing with pressing challenges thrust upon them.”

Carefree menstrual pads are contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, which presents a threat to the reproductive health of women using the products, a new lawsuit filed in California state court alleges.

The suit demands Carefree and its parent company, personal care product giant Edgewell, remove PFAS from the products or put a warning label on its packaging.

The exposure is potentially a “big health problem”, said Vineet Dubey, an attorney representing Ecological Alliance, a consumer advocacy group which brought the suit.

“This is a product that has direct exposure into the bloodstream because of the way it’s used and positioned on women’s bodies, so this is alarming, and it’s scary,” Dubey said. The suit was brought under California’s Proposition 65 law that requires companies to warn the state’s consumers if toxic chemicals are present in products.

Edgewell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals typically used to make products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they accumulate in humans and the environment. The chemicals are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.

There are virtually no federal limits on PFAS in consumer products despite the fact that they are widely used across the economy.

Ecological Alliance tested the products and found PFOA, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds. The Environmental Protection Agency this year found that virtually no level of exposure to PFOA in drinking water is safe and set a drinking water limit of 4ppt (parts per trillion). Testing found PFOA leached from the menstrual pads at about 756ppt per hour.

Recent research found that skin likely absorbs PFAS at much higher rates than previously thought, raising concerns about a product that is pressed up against women’s skin for hours at a time.

PFOA specifically is linked to reproductive health issues like hormone disruption, low birth weight, infertility, immune system toxicity in fetuses and more.

It’s unclear why the chemicals are in the products. PFAS are commonly used as waterproofing agents, and it is possible the PFOA, or a chemical that breaks down into PFOA once in the environment, is intentionally added. PFAS have been detected at high levels in toilet paper and diapers. It is also possible there is unintentional contamination somewhere in the supply chain.

Ecological Alliance in February filed a formal warning that it intended to sue Carefree if the company did not remove the chemicals or take action, or if the state’s regulators and attorney general did not take action. No one responded to the filing.

The suit asks the judge to stop the products from being sold until they’re free of the chemicals. Dubey has previously sued under Proposition 65 for PFAS or other toxic chemical contamination and said companies often reformulate products or make supply chain changes to address the issue, but they do not always.

“I hope [Carefree] acts responsibly because of how potentially dangerous PFAS exposure is in this way, but I never put it past corporations to fight to death to do the wrong thing,” he added.

Saoirse Ronan’s comment about women’s safety on The Graham Norton Show has gone viral after she said using a phone as a weapon is something “girls have to think about all the time”. Ronan later said the reaction has been “wild” and that the moment was “opening a conversation”.

Here, six women tell us what they think about the comments and how they feel about women’s safety.

‘I change my commute to avoid unlit paths’

It wasn’t just when [Ronan] said that line, it was that she was trying to say it and the others kept talking over her. She attempted at least twice to say it and they just kept making jokes. The whole context of it shows how much women’s lived experiences and attempts at sharing these are overlooked. People are more aware than before, but the show showed it’s not necessarily in the forefront of people’s minds. I normally cycle through Southampton common but I change my commute in the winter to avoid unlit bike paths. I also wear clothes where my phone is accessible at all times. Lizzi, 35, pharmacist, Southampton

‘I try and make myself appear bigger or angrier’

Self protection is the uppermost, but routine, concern when out and about on my own. Guys enjoy a different world and I’m so glad Saoirse seized the opportunity to tell it as it is. I feel keys are the best bet [for self-defence], although I’ve used my legs [to run] and have put on a surprisingly loud deep voice in the past. I did a self-defence class in the 80s and we were told to try and make ourselves seem unattractive to predators because they prey on those they think look frightened. That really struck me and sometimes I try and make myself appear bigger or angrier. Sarah, 59, speech and language therapy assistant, London

‘My dad taught me to box and I had soppy but fierce-looking big dogs’

I was about nine when my dad taught me how to box. Our independence as children was very important to him and he used to spar with me. He must’ve realised that as a girl it might be useful too. I’ve never really felt extreme fear but it’s still there. I’ve also had soppy but fierce-looking big dogs. I lived in London for 35 years and I had a doberman-German shepherd cross called Boo, because she was frightened of everything. I would take her for a walk around 11pm and people would cross the road. Janey, 72, retired graphic designer, Norfolk

‘It’s so easy to ignore a danger or threat if you don’t have to experience it yourself’

I’m a trans woman who only came out fully a couple of years ago. My style is everyday, nothing provocative, and I’m always taken for a woman. Walking home from the bus at night for the first time and feeling really unsafe I suddenly realised – this is what women go through the whole time. I’ve always been aware and supportive of women’s issues but even so, it was a horrible, shaming epiphany to realise that I’d seen past this basic fact of women’s lives. It’s so easy to ignore a danger or threat if you don’t have to experience it yourself. Kim, 60, classical musician, Sweden

‘The clip will be shared but will anything change?’

I agree with her, however, sometimes I worry people only have an interest in feminism when it’s delivered in viral, digestible moments. Yes, the clip will be shared and posted about, but will anything change? Probably not. I’m glad I’m a lesbian because my partners are less likely to cause me harm or kill me. It’s taken us decades to get even this far and I feel like we’re getting stuck at best and at worst going backwards. My mum always taught me to carry a can of strong deodorant that I could spray at someone. I have a big, metal water bottle I carry because I know I can swing it at someone. Ruby, 30s, works in education, US

‘Your elbow is one of your best weapons’

While living in South Africa for almost 20 years I attended a self-defence course for women. The facilitator, a former cop from Zimbabwe, said that most women who were raped had reported they had not known what to do, even when their hands were free. Your elbow is one of your best weapons. Who knew? Even 30 years later I remember what was taught. That said, I do sometimes travel with a small awl in my pocket. Aletta, 66, retired application software facilitator, the Netherlands

The Rhine overflowed last winter, covering fields miles from the river and in some places leaving just the tops of trees visible.

But Thomas Bollig, who farms just a few miles from the banks of the Rhine, was not worried. Even as floods inundated the fields of his neighbours, making sowing impossible, his holdings were largely unaffected. Bollig farms organically, and the natural methods he uses to improve his soil allow his fields to hold more water when it rains, and release it gradually, coping well with floods and droughts.

“It’s like a sponge,” he says, pointing across largely flat fields by Wachtberg village, near the city of Bonn. “We didn’t have the problems that many farmers did.”

That is not the only advantage he sees in having switched his arable and livestock farm from conventional intensive farming to fully organic farming. Around him, in the summer sunlight, bees are buzzing and the air is full of insects, alighting on the flowers that speckle his crops of beans and grain, the song of birds a cheerful background.

“We have a farm full of life today,” he says. “Wildflowers, insects, pollinators – it’s a perfect symbiosis, as they feed on the pests on the crops. And the soil is full of worms.” Out of 75 hectares (185 acres) on his farm, about eight hectares are wildflower meadows. In the middle of some of his cropping fields, tangled areas are left untouched for flowers and animals, a riot of colour – red, blue and gold – amid the green.

A recent pest infestation in his beanfield illustrates the point. “It was so bad, that we considered spraying,” Bollig says. But he kept faith in the organic process, and two weeks later the pests were gone and the fields “full of ladybirds”.

But the wildlife that abounds on Bollig’s farm is no longer typical for western European farms. About a quarter of Europe’s bird population has been wiped out in the last four decades – that is half a billion fewer birds in the sky today compared with 1980. Four in 10 European tree species are classed as threatened, butterfly numbers are down by about a third, one in 10 bee species are dying out, and two-thirds of the habitats of ecological importance are in an unfavourable condition. A fifth of European species face extinction.

Everywhere you look, the richness and abundance of European nature is under threat. Since the 1970s and 80s, even while many environmental indicators in Europe have improved – cleaner air in cities, less industrial pollution, less sewage in waterways (outside the UK) – the story of nature is one of steep and stark decline. Wildlife, trees, plants, fish and insects – the picture is bleak.

It is not possible to lay all of this destruction at the door of intensive farming, as urbanisation, invasive species and pollution from industry have their own impacts, but the figures clearly suggest farming has played a big role. Amid the overall decline in bird numbers, the ones making their home in farmland had it by far the worst, with numbers down by 57%, and separate research suggests steeper declines of insects in farmed areas.

Brian MacSharry, the head of the nature and biodiversity group at the European Environment Agency, says: “The habitat situation is pretty bad, the species little better, and there is a time lag between [the destruction of habitats and decline in] species. Overall, we know it is bad and that the trend is deteriorating. Agriculture is by far the biggest pressure.”

It was not supposed to be this way. Since the early 2000s, changes to Europe’s farming practices and subsidy regime – the common agricultural policy (CAP) – have been geared explicitly towards protecting the environment, as well as supporting farmers and food production. The CAP represents a third of the EU budget, coming to about €55bn (£46bn) a year and in return for that largesse, farmers are supposed to meet a minimum level of environmental protection. Taking additional measures such as growing more trees or conserving wetlands can net them extra support.

But so far at least, the environmental aspects of the CAP changes have not worked. The European court of auditors in 2020 found little evidence of a positive impact on biodiversity from the CAP. The European Environment Agency, in its State of Nature report in 2023, found that the EU’s farmed environment had continued to decline, with the health of only 14% of habitats and about a quarter of non-bird species classed as “good”. The CAP is also making the climate worse: about 80% of the budget goes to support carbon-intensive animal food products, according to a paper published this month in Nature.

“The CAP has become a monster,” says Faustine Bas-Defossez, the director of nature, health and environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a network of citizens’ organisations. “It is not helping farmers in the mainstream to adopt more sustainable practices. It’s driving the intensification of farming, and increasing the pressure on natural resources. Instead of the polluter pays principle, it’s turning into a system of the polluter gets paid.”

Pieter de Pous, the programme lead at the E3G thinktank, says the CAP is “a policy in search of a justification”. “It is an emotionally charged topic that touches on identity, nationhood, culture. It is about concerns over depopulation in many areas of Europe, and the strong policy wish to not have depopulation.”

After pressure from protesting farmers, even the meagre protections for nature will be further watered down. De Pous says farmers capitalised onthe European Commission’s fear of a backlash against green policies and green parties in the parliamentary elections this June. “This is political opportunism, it’s tactical on the part of the farmers who are protesting.” He believes the farmers were simply going after a larger slice of the European budget.

Whatever the causes, the results for nature are likely to be dire. And ironically, given the fervour of the protests, any hoped-for boon to small farmers is unlikely to materialise – it will be big farmers who benefit from less stringent regulation, as they do from the CAP overall. As payments to farmers under the CAP are based on the amount of land they farm, the CAP favours size above everything else. That means the squeeze on traditional small-scale family farms will continue, with the biggest farmers continuing to scoop up the lion’s share of the cash, and the poorest forced further to the margins.

How did we get into this mess? And is there a way out?

A focus on food security above all

In the early years of what became the EU, the focus of European agricultural policy was on food security above all. When the CAP was conceived, in the early 1960s, farmers were encouraged to increase yields by adopting more efficient machinery and the new fertilisers and pesticides. They were given quotas to supply certain amounts of food, and guaranteed prices for their produce. These were seen as ways to provide stability to farmers, and food security to consumers.

In the late 1980s, when it became clear the quotas were distorting the market and leading to surpluses of some products – the EU’s famous “butter mountain” and “wine lake” – overhaul of the CAP led to more direct payments to farmers. Then, from 2003 to 2012, farm payments were “decoupled” entirely from production and based instead on the amount of land farmed, with extra payments available for farmers who could exhibit good stewardship of the environment. While that has simplified the payment system and removed many of the distortions, it also means the biggest farmers reap the biggest rewards.

“CAP is just welfare for the rich,” is how Ariel Brunner, the director of BirdLife Europe, termed it, on the social media platform X. “With symbolic consolation for smaller farmers to muddy the water. It doesn’t serve any social purpose. And it favours the destruction of the resources farming depends on.”

But it is also still a lifeline for poor farmers. The problem is that the supermarkets that buy the farmers’ produce, and the suppliers of farm inputs such as fertiliser and pesticides, also count on the subsidy payments. “You have the retailers and middlemen sucking out all of the margin, and farmers being left with very little,” says Will White, the sustainable farming coordinator at the UK-based Sustain coalition of farming and food organisations. “That’s one of the things that locks us into a cycle of highly intensive farming. The status quo is not a good option for anyone.”

In the UK, for instance, farmers make less than a penny in profit from selling a loaf of bread or an average-sized block of cheese. (Although the UK is no longer under the CAP, the government still provides equivalent subsidies under a separate support scheme, so the mechanism is broadly similar.) On each kilo of apples, the farmer makes just 3p. Martin Lines, the chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, says “none of the payment really reaches the farmer. The payments go to the value chain. Their profits have mushroomed.”

So a system that was meant to help farmers, keep Europeans fed and the land well cared for, has turned into one that trashes the environment; enriches big landowners and leaves poor farmers struggling; delights retailers but costs money for consumers; and causes headaches for politicians of all stripes because they know they can be held to ransom by cavalcades of tractors and burning haybales.

In Britain, the post-Brexit farming system is tied up in similar muddles. The Conservative government vowed in 2017 to move away from area-based payments to “public money for public goods”, but that has proved easier in principle than practice, as environmental land management schemes have come under fire, with accusations of landowners forcing struggling tenants off their land so they can rewild it or grow trees for carbon offsets, and a renewed feeling that small farmers are still at the bottom of the heap.

Meanwhile, the climate crisis is gathering pace, and the effects are being felt on food and farming, sometimes quite brutally. Agriculture and land use change contribute at least a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, so the effects of farming on the climate need to be tackled at the same time as the effects of the climate on farming, but so far there is little sign of that happening.

To bring farmers round to the benefits of farming in a more environmentally sustainable manner, they need to be shown that green regulations ultimately benefit them, says Sustain’s White. “Farmers care about the bottom line – if they can make money from environmental schemes, I think most farmers will listen. Farmers should be working together with governments more – it’s not in their interests to be at the political extremes.”

There are encouraging signs of possible reform. In September, farmers, retailers, consumer groups and environmentalists held strategic dialogues, at the suggestion of the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and put together a proposal that calls for “urgent, ambitious and feasible” change in farm and food systems, with financial support to help farmers get there. It also acknowledges that Europeans eat more animal protein than doctors and scientists recommend, and calls for a shift toward plant-based diets supported by better education, stricter marketing and voluntary buyouts of farms in regions that intensively rear livestock.

There is plenty of scope for redirecting payments to farmers so that they reward greener and less intensive farming, argues Richard Benwell, the chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link charity. “The environmental work that farmers do has been chronically undervalued for a very long time,” he says. “We need to recognise those public goods that traditional small farmers have long been expected to do for free. And on the other side, where harm occurs they should have to pay.”

Bollig believes the CAP could be better targeted, to benefit farmers who follow organic or less demanding “nature-friendly” practices. There are some schemes within the CAP to encourage sustainable farming, but they do not go far enough to help reduce inputs instead of seeking higher yields, he says.

“It doesn’t give farmers a motivation to change,” says Bollig. “Bad farms with better yields make more money, and good farms [with sustainable practices] are left to struggle.”

Building a sustainable global food system, in Europe and across the world, in which greenhouse gas emissions are low, in which biodiversity flourishes, in which the impacts of extreme weather are minimised using natural means, is difficult but possible, according to Ed Davey, of the World Resources Institute. “Farming can work in harmony with nature,” he says. “Sustainable farming techniques are there.”

Crucial to any successful reform will be separating out the interests of big farms and small ones, says De Pous. While big farmers benefit from intensification, with more fertiliser, more pesticide, more concentrated animal feed lots, small farmers could benefit from the opposite, with more emphasis on quality and organic production. “Small farmers should not give up, but they need to question who is representing them, and what they are asking for. The interests of small farmers are not necessarily the interests of big farmers. There are huge differences,” he said.

Consumers will also have to adjust. In the EU, about 80% of farm subsidy goes towards animal products, which means it has an outsize impact on greenhouse gas emissions. In some European countries, livestock now outnumber people. Changing this will be painful – the farmers of the Netherlands objected to proposals to start to limit the national herd, to cut down on pollution, and at recent polls it was one of the issues that pushed the far right to electoral success in the country. Yet if consumers in developed countries change their diet to eat more healthily – which means less ultra-processed food and less meat – there will be less demand for intensively farmed meat products, and the burden on the land will reduce markedly.

Hopes of reaching the point where farm subsidy systems around the world are dismantled or redirected towards providing the kind of planet we need to feed 8 billion people – or in future 10 billion, or even 12 billion – without destroying what remains of the wildlife, and permanently disabling the climate, may seem utopian. But there is no law of nature that says farming must kill off the natural environment it depends on; many small-scale farmers around the world, and for previous centuries, have worked in harmony with nature and other species. Farm subsidy regimes are economic systems that were drawn up by bureaucrats within the last half-century, and they can be redrawn, despite short-term pressure to the contrary. What that takes is political courage.